The United States is the world's leader in incarceration with 2.2 million people currently in the nation's prisons or jails -- a 500% increase over the past thirty years. These trends have resulted in prison overcrowding and state governments being overwhelmed by the burden of funding a rapidly expanding penal system, despite increasing evidence that large-scale incarceration is not the most effective means of achieving public safety.

In testimony delivered to the Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections, Marc Mauer, Executive Director of The Sentencing Project, calls for reforms to federal sentencing structures to create an upper limit of no more than 20 years in prison, barring exceptional circumstances. Doing so would reduce the federal prison population considerably, avert unnecessary costs of incarceration, and provide resources for more effective public safety investments.

In testimony before the Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections, The Sentencing Project's Executive Director Marc Mauer called for reforms to federal sentencing structures to create an upper limit of no more than 20 years in prison, barring exceptional circumstances. The New York Times states that "a compelling case" can be made for such a policy since "long sentences do little to prevent crime":

"A generation ago, if you asked a Republican and a Democrat to debate criminal justice policy, they would have argued about which party was toughest on crime," writes The Sentencing Project's Federal Advocacy Counsel Jeremy Haile in The Hill. "Now, they’re arguing the other way: who can be smart."